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Saturday, March 29, 2008



By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE (ANS) -- Scott Harrison is an orthopedic surgeon in the United States. For most of his professional career he was a professor of orthopedic surgery at Penn State’s medical school in Pennsylvania.

He told Peter Wooding, senior news editor of the United Kingdom-based UCB Radio at the recent NRB Convention in Nashville, Tennessee: "While I was doing that I was also going into the Third World, into the developing world, to teach orthopedic surgery to people and realized that there was an enormous unmet need for the disabled children of the world."

Harrison says that, "With a little research, I realized there were about 300 million disabled children in the world and there was no agency really attempting to cure these children. There were agencies that were trying to support them, but about 40 percent of those -- about 120 million children -- can be cured if someone just gets to them. So after some prayerful thought about this, we decided that we would create an organization that would at least in some way address the needs of these children.

"So we develop and build teaching hospitals so that we can train national doctors to do what needs to be done in their countries. But our hospitals will form a network around the world to bring care for these desperately needy children."

Wooding commented: "You could have carried on as a successful doctor leading a comfortable life. Were there some challenges involved when you made that transition?"

"My wife and I knew that our life would be very different than our friends. I laughingly say that my second home is the business lounge at Heathrow Airport, but it’s been a very satisfying life for us -- it challenges us in many ways. My first love is to care for children in a hands-on manner. As our organization has grown, we’re now in 13 different countries, my work is much more in the administrative role of organizing these hospitals, finding the countries, helping start the hospitals in the countries and -- so sadly -- I’m no longer a bedside surgeon, but it does have its own rewards as well."

Wooding said he understands that Harrison has carried out through his work 41,000 operations on these children. "How does it feel just with that vision to see so many lives impacted?"

"Well, it is very satisfying ; it’s very challenging to find the doctors and actually I guess it’s a reflection of the dynamic work that we’re doing the number is now approaching 47,000 children who have received surgical care and we’ve probably cared for over 700,000 children in a non-surgical way.

So how has Harrison been able to multiply that vision to enable that to happen?

"I think there are many people who perhaps hadn’t thought of exactly the same way I did, but once they see what it is we’re doing they’re drawn to this ministry. We have I think at least 1,200 employees now, many most of them working for maybe less than they could work in other industries. So it’s very helpful to see how people recognize that they can make a difference in the world by caring for these children. These are children without hope, but not without a future if we just do something to give them a chance. So we change lives physically and we change lives emotionally and spiritually as well in what we do."

Wooding said Harrison has established the work in some of the more unsettled areas of the world, like Afghanistan and Bethlehem. "Tell us about the works you’ve established there?"

"We went to Afghanistan in 2002 initially to start a children’s hospital and we realized that we were in the country probably at than point with the worst medical care in the world. One out of every eleven women would die in child birth in that country and probably at least 20 or 30 percent of the children born would not see their fifth birthday. So we realized that the problem was much bigger than just the disabled children in Afghanistan and so we eventually opened a hospital which gives care to the women who are pregnant and have difficult deliveries as well as their children, but we broadened that so that we could do teaching to many other areas of medicine, one of which is we’re the first place that does minimally invasive surgery so that we can introduce that form of care. We have a fellowship there for training the Afghan professors who will be staffing their medical school. We have a family practice residency there which is something they’d never had -- and again we’re really creating the people who will train the next echelon of doctors in Afghanistan. It’s a Muslim country; it is one which is very protective of their culture and we respect them for that. But as a western Christian non-profit we make no apology that that’s who we are and we try to remain culturally sensitive to their traditions but also have them understand that maybe the West isn’t exactly what they thought. There’s another face to the west that they haven’t seen and to this point we have been well received by the people in the country. And as I told the minister of health when we started this we would only commit to a hundred years and at that point we would have to re-evaluate if we would stay longer."
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Harrison said his organization is working to open a state of the art hospital in Bethlehem.

"Well we haven’t opened it yet, but we’re well into the process of trying to build it. That’s been a three-year project with the changes in the dynamics both politically and militarily we’ve been close a couple of times to either taking over an abandoned hospital and reopening that or to building on. That remains a moving target for us with the violence that’s currently happened just in the last few weeks with deaths -- both Palestinian and Israelis. But we’re optimistic that we will be giving care there very shortly recognizing that the challenges there perhaps will be greater than any other place we’ve been but the needs right now are extraordinary because of the changes it’s just very difficult for a mother to get care for her child in the West Bank now."

Wooding wanted to know that with life on the road for Harrison are there any particular stories where he has really faced challenges where there’s been danger to his life where he has seen God’s intervention?

"Well I’m sure there’s been times when I didn’t realize that there were dangers to my life and God did intervene to protect me from that. We were leaving Malawi a few years ago and in African countries often the airports are not up to our western standards and as we took off the plane attempted to fly through a flock of Egrets that flushed and both of the engines were disabled and fortunately the pilot made a 180-degree turn an we landed with almost no power in the plane. Clearly when we got out and saw how the plane was just smeared in blood I don’t know how many of these birds --they’re about the size of an American turkey -- we had hit but neither engine was functioning when we finally landed. There’ve been times that we’ve been shot at, but obviously they missed. I was just yesterday on a plane with someone who asked me if I didn’t wear a bulletproof vest when I worked in Bethlehem. I explained to them that as a Christian I really feel that I’m doing God’s work and that protection is there. I’m not naïve enough to think that that doesn’t mean that I might not be injured or worse, but you just have to believe you’re doing something that matters and the risks are acceptable.

Is it a challenge to get overwhelmed sometimes by the need -- perhaps Harrison can’t treat all the children that come to him?

"It’s a frustration when we realize how much needs to be done but the satisfaction of seeing children who are without hope and parents who are without hope... Probably 90 percent of these children who are disabled are living with a single parent now because it doesn’t matter if you’re in the West or in a Two-Thirds world country the strain on a family and a marriage is extraordinary when you have a disabled child. So it’s not just the children who we give hope to but the parents as well and there’ve been numerous examples of I know of and probably many that I don’t know of where by healing the child the families can become reunited again, because part of it is just the economic strain that makes it impossible for them to stay together."

Wooding also wanted to know if now looking at Christian media, "we’re here at the National Religious Broadcasters convention -- it does seem we’ve come a long way in highlighting through Christian media humanitarian need. Do you see that as an encouragement?"

"Very much so. I had not been aware when I started this a dozen years ago that there had been a period of time when the Christian emphasis was on winning souls to their faith more so than the humanitarian aspect and actually I had people in a condescending or derogatory way say well you don’t understand those days are gone. Well, actually those days had gone but just in the last dozen years I think there’s been a dramatic resurgence of understanding that that’s not the message of the Gospel. When Jesus sent out His twelve disciples He told them to do two things not one. He told them to preach the Kingdom of God but in the same sentence He said 'and heal the people that you meet.' So we’re not doing anything original or anything different than what was commanded 2,000 years ago."

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